Your LinkedIn Profile Is More Important Than Your Website
One thing I've been thinking about recently is LinkedIn outreach.
To be honest, I'm still slightly undecided on where it's heading. For a while, it felt like everyone was doing it. Connection requests, automated messages and sales pitches were landing in inboxes every day. I think LinkedIn went through a phase where outreach became heavily associated with spam, and because of that a lot of people switched off from it completely.
Interestingly, I think that may create an opportunity.
As often happens in marketing, once a tactic becomes overcrowded and overused, its effectiveness starts to decline. Then, as people abandon it and move on to the next shiny thing, the channel begins to open up again. Part of me thinks that's what may happen with LinkedIn outreach over the next year or two.
The difference now is that people behave differently.
A few years ago, somebody might receive a connection request and accept it without giving it much thought. Today, people are far more cautious. Before replying to a message, accepting a connection request or engaging in a conversation, they want to know who they're talking to.
And where do they go to find that out?
LinkedIn.
Your profile is the first thing people check
This is why I believe your LinkedIn profile has become more important than your website.
That might sound like a strange statement, especially when businesses invest significant amounts of time, money and energy into their websites. Yet if LinkedIn is one of your primary lead generation channels, most people are not visiting your website first.
They're visiting your profile.
When somebody sees your content, receives a message from you or hears your name mentioned by somebody else, the first thing they typically do is click through to your profile. They want to understand who you are, what you do and whether you're someone worth speaking to before they invest any more time in the conversation.
Only after they've formed that initial impression do they decide whether to go any further.
For many businesses, the LinkedIn profile has quietly become the first stage of the buyer journey.
The credibility shift
I think this has become even more important because of how much noise there is online.
People are naturally more sceptical than they were a few years ago. They're more cautious about who they engage with, quicker to question whether somebody is genuine and less willing to enter a conversation without doing a little research first.
That means your LinkedIn profile is increasingly becoming your credibility layer.
It's where people assess your experience. It's where they decide whether they trust what you're saying. It's where they look for signals that suggest you're someone worth paying attention to.
For many professional services businesses in particular, I think this matters far more than people realise. A strong website is useful, but it often doesn't get the chance to do its job if somebody isn't convinced by what they see on LinkedIn first.
In other words, the website is no longer the first hurdle.
The LinkedIn profile is.
Are we investing in the wrong asset?
What I find interesting is that many businesses still spend significantly more time thinking about their website than they do their LinkedIn profile.
They'll redesign pages, rewrite copy, improve navigation and spend months refining the user experience. Meanwhile, the LinkedIn profile that thousands of potential clients may see each year remains largely untouched.
I'm not suggesting that websites are no longer important. Far from it.
What I’m suggesting is that if LinkedIn is one of your primary channels for generating opportunities, your profile deserves the same level of attention that most businesses reserve for their website.
Because if somebody isn't convinced by your LinkedIn profile, they might never reach your website in the first place.
For many B2B businesses, LinkedIn has effectively become the front door to the business. The website still matters, but it often comes later in the buying journey, after somebody has already formed an opinion through your profile.
A final thought
I'm genuinely interested to see what happens with LinkedIn outreach over the next few years. Part of me thinks it may become more effective again as fewer people rely on it and businesses move away from the mass automation that dominated for so long.
What I do know is that if you're using LinkedIn to generate leads, your profile matters more than ever.
Before somebody visits your website, books a call or replies to your message, there's a very good chance they'll visit your LinkedIn profile first. That profile is often responsible for creating the trust, credibility and confidence needed for the next step to happen.
So before you spend more time tweaking your website this month, it may be worth taking a fresh look at your LinkedIn profile.
It might be the most important page your prospects visit all year.
P.S. If LinkedIn is a key part of your lead generation strategy and you're not sure whether your profile is helping or hurting your results, feel free to get in touch. Sometimes a few small changes can make a much bigger difference than people realise.
